Amethyst Beach
Meditations
Barbara Merritt
"I have heard that when something is valuable and worthwhile, you are not apt to find it lying around in great heaps. Diamonds and gold are rare. Lions do not congregate in large numbers. So it is that God is not easy to find. Truth is not easy to put your hands on. But the saints, in all religious traditions, say that there is something about the search itself that instructs us, humbles us, informs us. Just because our own life sometimes appears to be empty of spiritual treasure, it doesn’t mean that this treasure doesn’t exist. People do find amethysts! People do experience the reality of God."
—from “Amethyst Beach”
A UUA meditation manual for 2007.
Barbara Merritt is senior minister at the First Unitarian Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she has served for twenty-four years. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Starr King School for the Ministry and has received two honorary doctorates. Merritt has two grown sons and lives in Worcester, Massachusetts, with her husband Jeffrey.
Praise for Amethyst Beach:
“Merritt invites the ordinary, even the petty, events of
daily life into thoughtful dialogue with the divine.”
─Nancy Bowen, District Executive, Mountain Desert
District
“Amethyst Beach is nothing less than a spiritual journey, pointing us toward the holy and drawing
our hand ever so much closer to truth.”
─Richard Sparrow, Local Church Ministries, United Church of
Christ
“The gems you will find in Amethyst Beach will sparkle in memory
long after you have tucked this grace-filled volume away.”
—Forrest Church, author, Bringing God Home
Last updated on Monday, December 3, 2007.
